The first infrared observation of a comet is widely and wrongly attributed to
that of C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki) by Becklin and Westphal. It is Lowell Observatory
staff astronomer Carl O. Lampland (1873-1951) who must claim that honor, as
former Director Art Hoag (1921-1999) reminded us in 1984. Using a sensitive
radiometer designed by Coblentz, Lampland successfully took difficult measures
of comet C/1927 X1 (Skjellerup-Maristany) in broad daylight over Dec. 16-19
with the 40-inch reflector on Mars Hill. There are parallels between these
observations and Vesto M. Slipher’s of the redshifts of spiral nebulae. Each
were pioneering. Each were presented at American Astronomical Society meetings
where they were enthusiastically received. Each were published as extended
abstracts in Popular Astronomy. And each fell into relative obscurity with
priority credit to fall to later workers. The wound in Lampland’s case was
partly self-inflicted – ever the perfectionist, he never turned his abstract
into a formal paper. I have retrieved Lampland’s radiometric observations of
C/1927 X1 from his diaries and logbooks in the Lowell Observatory archives and
find that they are eminently usable. I present a preliminary view of their
reduction, now in progress.